WHAT CAN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CELEBRATE ON HUMAN RIGHTS DAY?

A coalition of more than 200 not-for-profit human rights and social justice organizations charged today that the Bush Administration is contributing to racial, religious and ethnic discrimination in the U.S. – and attempting to cover up its violations in a report to the United Nations they term “a complete whitewash.” 

The charges are contained in a “shadow report “ timed to coincide with International Human Rights Day, today, and designed to rebut a far more positive picture of American racism painted by the U.S. State Department (DOS). State’s report, quietly submitted to the U.N. last spring and posted without publicity on the Department’s website, was a requirement under the world body’s “International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)”, to which the U.S. is a signatory.

The shadow report was prepared by the U.S. Human Rights Network (USHRN), a large group of non-governmental organizations ranging from Amnesty International to the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund.

It charges that the U.S. Government has failed both by action and inaction to promote racial and ethnic justice in a host of areas, including voting rights, health care, housing, education, homelessness, police brutality and fairness in the criminal justice system.

It says the government report “misrepresents and/or cherry picks data demonstrating ongoing racial disparities and discrimination” and “suffers from glaring gaps clearly aimed at covering up the most egregious examples of persistent racism and racial discrimination in the U.S. today.”

USHRN’s Executive Director, Ajamu Baraka, told us, “This report is an important effort to correct the historic record as it relates to the failure of the Bush Administration and previous administrations to address the ongoing crisis of racial oppression and discrimination in the U.S.”

Next March, the U.S. will be required to defend its record on race relations, persistent racial inequalities, and ongoing racial discrimination, before a panel of UN experts.

The USHRN highlights a number of areas where it says the Government report fails to confront the facts. 

For example, said a USHRN spokesperson, the Government’s report highlights training and outreach programs for law enforcement agencies to encourage sensitivity to Arab and Muslim communities developed in the aftermath of 9/11, “while completely failing to acknowledge widespread racially and ethnically targeted law enforcement practices such as the special registration program and aggressive round-ups and interviews of thousands of non-citizen Muslims, Arabs and South Asians.”

The USHRN warns that “the humanitarian crisis at the border has reached new heights as migrant deaths hit record numbers and the federal government pours billions of dollars into militarizing the region. In the interior, workers are increasingly subject to violent and disruptive immigration raids at their workplaces and in their homes, typically targeting a population of ethnic minorities that is hugely disproportionate to the number of people actually charged with violations.” 

It says that discrimination against migrants, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers of color “is increasingly fueled by legislation, administrative regulations and enforcement policies framing immigration as an assault on the public purse, and immigrants as illegitimate interlopers rather than substantial contributors to the nation's economy.”

The report highlights a number of issues relating particularly to women. It charges that the U.S. government’s claim that “substantial progress has been made in addressing disparities in . . . access to health care has been made over the years” is belied by persistent and dramatic racial disparities in infant and maternal mortality rates, life expectancy, and prevalence and survival rates of cancer, HIV-AIDS, and heart disease shocking in a country of the United States’ wealth and resources.”

“African American women are nearly four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women and 24 times more likely to be infected with HIV/AIDS,” the report says.  It attributes these disparities to “a range of government actions and inactions, from the failure to address high rates of uninsured women of color to restrictions on public funding for sexual and reproductive health services.”

Women of color, it says, “are more economically disadvantaged than white women and more likely to rely on government funded health insurance, are disproportionately impacted by federal and state policies that restrict access to and public funding for sexual and reproductive health care.”  .

The efforts cited by the U.S. government as evidence of progress fail to address “systemic factors driving health disparities, including obstacles to access to health care, such as lack of health insurance, unequal distribution of health care resources, and poor quality public health care,” the report says.  

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